Again, I’m not sure that would be allowed at it’s technically a broadcast because there is no licensed entity called OUTNET operating in the amateur environment.

Think I’ve just had an idea …

In certain countries the use of “tactical” callsigns is authorised. Here in the US you will commonly hear hams participating in an ARES event using such calls. “Medical, this is Mile Post 5. Please send an ambulance to my location.” “Mile Post 5, this is Medical. It’s on its way. ETA 3 minutes. Medical out. K9ABC.” “Thanks Medical. Mile Post 5 out. K9XYZ”

Per the US licences rules stations are only required to identify at the end of and every 10 minutes during a conversation. So you see how the callsigns were left off the communication until it was over?

If Syed were to start a “club” station at the office and float an APRS station under it’s callsign with the tactical call of OUTNET RF based hams would be legally able to send APRS requests to him without falling foul of the Broadcast rule.

From a technical perspective, it does not have to be anything fancy or even connected to Outernet proper at all. the rest of the APRS network would handle the connection to and deliver the message just in the same way it has been doing.

I have a question about this approach, but before getting into the broadcast-issue (does it even apply in this case), am I not forbidden from setting up an APRS station, since I have a pecuniary interest in the success of OUTNET?

It seems entirely incidental that you happen to have a ham licence, as you don’t need it to search APRS messages that have been posted to the internet, or to send Wikipeda pages over your service.

If you were sending APRS messages that would be a different question, but getting information from the internet and using it to construct Wikipedia search queries doesn’t seem to require any kind of licence. Therefore the terms of any ham licence don’t enter the equation.

Sam, Your situation with requesting Wikipedia articles by APRS is EXACTLY the same as Ham radio operators at sea who send a APRS message or a WINLINK Email message to request a weather Grib file. Some of the grib fie providers are commercial entities.

Ham radio radio sailors requesting gribs would be the same situation for APRS Wikipedia requests.

The second issue is if Outernet “scrapes” the APRS message data from a physical APRS server in Georgaphical USA then British Ham radio rules may not apply.

On ham radio
Can a ham user ask ‘what’s the population of Rio’ to another ham user - yes this is allowed
Can a ham user send a APRS packet saying ‘what’s the population of Rio?’ to another ham user - yes this is allowed
Can a ham user send a APRS packet saying ‘what’s the population of Rio?’ to ‘outnet’ a channel set up by another ham user - yes this is allowed
Can a ham user send a APRS packet saying ‘wiki en population of Rio’ to another ham user or ‘outnet’- yes this is allowed. Neither the sender nor the recipient has any pecuniary interest in this message.

On the internet
Can Outernet use the public data on http://aprs.fi/?c=message&call=outnet and use it to search Wikipedia - yes this is allowed, and does not require a ham radio licence.

On Outernet
Can Outernet send Wikipedia data over their non-ham service - yes this is allowed, and does not require a ham radio licence.

Can a ham user send a APRS packet saying ‘what’s the population of Rio?’ to ‘outnet’ a channel set up by another ham user - yes this is allowed

NO this is NOT allowed.

Communications have to be from one ham to another. There is no such callsign as OUTNET. There is also no such tactical callsign as OUTNET. Therefore this request becomes both a broadcast and a communication with an unlicensed station.

And yes, I think that floating a tactical call that’s not at all physically connected to Outernet itself might be the way around this. For the NYC Marathon we loaded a bunch of APRS trackers onto the buses that delivered runners from the Library on 5th Ave to Fort Wadsworth . The trackers had tactical callsigns like “BUS1” etc. We were able to add a comment in the beacon to reveal the actual call of the devices used eg: